QR Code Size Calculator
Give it the QR version, your printer resolution and how many printer dots each module should use. It returns the module size, the symbol width, the four-module quiet zone and the total printed width in millimetres.
- No signup
- Whole-dot arithmetic
- Quiet zone included
Your symbol and printer
1–40. Modules = 17 + 4 × version.
50–4800 dots per inch.
Whole dots. Four is a common choice on a 400 DPI label printer.
This is print geometry only — the measurements your artwork will have on paper. It is not a prediction that a given scanner will read the code at that size. Scan a printed sample with the oldest device that will realistically be used.
Measurements
- Modules across the symbol
- 29
- Modules including the quiet zone
- 37
- Module size
- 0.254 mm
- Symbol width
- 7.366 mm
- Quiet zone (4 modules each side)
- 1.016 mm
- Total printed width
- 9.398 mm
The short answer
Module size in millimetres is 25.4 × dots per module ÷ DPI. The symbol is (17 + 4 × version) modules across, and the finished printed square adds four empty modules on each side, so the total is (modules + 8) × module size.
Version 3 is 29 modules across, 37 with the quiet zone. At 400 DPI and 4 dots per module each module is 0.254 mm, so the symbol is 7.366 mm and the whole printed square is 9.398 mm.
Definitions
- Module — one square of the QR grid, black or white. Everything scales from it.
- Version — the grid size, 1 to 40. Not a quality setting: it is decided by how much you encode and at which error correction level.
- Quiet zone — the empty margin a reader uses to find the symbol. Four modules for an ordinary QR code, two for Micro QR.
- DPI — your printer's dots per inch. A 400 DPI thermal label printer lays 400 dots in 25.4 mm.
What this is not
It is print geometry, not a scanability promise. Nobody can calculate from these three numbers whether your reader will decode your label — ink spread, contrast, curvature, gloss and camera quality all matter and none of them are inputs. Treat the output as the dimension to draw at, then test the print.
Working the other way round — you know the finished width and need the pixel count to export — use the print resolution calculator. To make the code itself, start at the QR code generator, and read the printing guide before you send a batch to a printer.